Millions of children in the United States are educated in the home. Millions more receive their education from private institutions. For parents, a common reason for seeking alternatives to public education is the desire to ensure that they receive instruction in accord with their religious beliefs. In many cases, these beliefs include exclusive claims about the nature of God, salvation, or morality. Recently, several scholars have argued that, to achieve a diverse and tolerant society, homeschooling and private education should be abolished or severely limited. They have contended that “a liberal multicultural education,” which will expose children to different ideas and perspectives, is necessary for the preservation of democratic values. Homeschooling, they claim, leads to close-mindedness and intolerance because children are taught to affirm certain beliefs which imply that not all other traditions are equally valid. The argument that homeschooling should be banned or severely restricted, however, relies on illiberal and intolerant premises that have already been discredited as inconsistent with our constitutional liberties. Although tolerance may be a valuable objective, it cannot be forcibly imposed by using the state's power to create philosophical homogeneity. True tolerance and diversity require a constitutional commitment to liberty for all, not a “constitutional norm” of silencing the “intolerant.”

Friday, December 20, 2013

"An Oklahoma company says it has at least a partial solution to the epidemic of deadly school violence," News9.com reports.

OnAlert Guardian Systems says it's perfected a system that relies on sensors that operate by plugging each of them into a regular classroom wall socket.

Company Spokesman Michael Tennyson says if a gunshot is fired in a school, those sensors will automatically know if, and even the caliber of gun used. The system alerts 911 operators and law enforcement authorities immediately.

Tennyson says the first units will be installed in Yukon High School, Middle School, and an elementary school within the year.

Friday, December 6, 2013

"If the superintendents of failing school districts were as adept at fixing schools as they are at making excuses for their poor performance, America would have the best education system in the world," Eric Hanushek and Paul Peterson write today.

Hanushek is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Peterson is professor of government at Harvard. They say that if U.S. students could reach the performance level of students in Canada, that feat alone "would increase our workers' incomes by an average of 20 percent. That growth would be a tremendous aid in balancing the federal budget without raising taxes or cutting spending."

Educational Choice in a Nutshell

The end goal of “public education” is an educated public. There are many different means to an end. Educational choice refers to any policy that allows parents to choose the safest and best schools for their children, whether those schools are government-operated or privately operated.

In a free society, the government rightly defers to parents when it comes to raising their children. And since education is simply a subset of parenting, the government should defer to parents when it comes to educating their children. Parents, not government officials, have the moral right to determine their child’s path.

Comments Policy

The views expressed in these posts are those of the bloggers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any institution. The goal of this blog is to create an open discussion about education reform (most notably parental choice) in Oklahoma. All feedback is welcome as long as it includes the commenter's name and doesn't violate the common rules of netiquette.